I’ve had the opportunity to give a talk on KompoZer 0.8, in front of more people than I expected for a relative small event. I could present the work I’ve been doing on KompoZer for the last twelve months and give a mini-roadmap about the future of this project.

the FTP support is getting better: KompoZer 0.8b1 is able to upload any file, and creates subfolders properly

KompoZer 0.8b1 can finally open PHP files on Linux. Vingtetun, I owe you one for this!

side effect: KompoZer 0.8 will probably be able to edit text files (PHP, JavaScript, CSS, htaccess…)

the split view has been improved

GNU/Linux i686 users, you can try the latest nightly here and report bugs here. This version should be pretty close to the official 0.8b1 release but it still needs to be tested: it's not the official 0.8b1 release, it's just a snapshot.

The MacOS X and Windows versions are on their way. L10n contributors, get ready! :-)

EDIT (2009-09-30 15:15 GMT):

the download link on kompozer.net was a bad idea: I got a bandwidth alert, and kompozer.net might be down for a few hours. This file has been moved to SourceForge.net.

I'm not sure to have the time to release the official 0.8b1 before the MozCamp. Worst case, the binaries will be available next week.

Alain Lorieux (“chinon37”), my colleague on Geckozone, designed the KompoZer 0.7 icon in 2006. The idea behind this icon was quite simple: a globe for the web, a calligraphy feather for the editor. This icon has given KompoZer its visual identity and I like it a lot, but it has two drawbacks:

it’s a raster file: it’s not easy to resize, it doesn’t look so good in big sizes and it’s very difficult to tweak;

most people rather see a leaf instead of a feather.

The upcoming KompoZer 0.8b1 release is an opportunity to refresh this icon.